There was a lot of moonshine being made during the depression. My grandmother’s brother went to Brushy Mtn. State prison for making moonshine. He didn’t stay long but when he got out he started growing cane instead of corn and made molasses instead of shine. He was making it when I was a kid. My favorite thing was to help with the molasses. He used a mule and a cane mill. I didn’t help much but I did like to sit on a log with my cup and wait for the hot molasses to come out. :-) My great-aunt always had a big pan of hot buttermilk biscuits to go with it once it started coming out of the mill.
It’s a sad shame kids of today don’t experience things that they will remember their entire lives. I get my molasses from our local Mennonite community now.
Oh my, what memories!
I kept bees for about 10 years, and part of that is overwinter feeding, and I had 29 hives at one time, which meant I bought up lots of white sugar, maybe more than 100 lbs at once when it was on sale.
One day my dad came in (he is a former district attorney) and he said, "Unless I was looking at a bootlegger, I've never seen that much sugar in one place." And on the other side of some of the inlaws, moonshine is given as Christmas gifts, or so I've been told :-) I'm also kind of sad that today's children don't see the things we did.